Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.
They've got a billion-strong userbase and yet the Android app still dumped literally every attachment I received into my camera roll until I manually added '.nomedia' files in the right places.
And, oh man, the API for businesses is a Kafkaesque nightmare. Maybe it was good before it got Zucked, but I had to fight with their support for over a week to get an automated ban-hammer overturned... only for it to get auto-banned again two days later. We hadn't even deployed the damn thing yet!
Every Android "gallery"-type app I've ever used defaults to a view that mixes together every known album/folder on the device.
That works fine (and is in fact easier than remembering the exact album) when I get to pick and choose exactly what I photograph/save, but it became borderline unusable once WhatsApp started vomiting hundreds of stupid GIFs and throwaway screenshots into it.
If by most you mean 50% then sure. But the other 50% countries prefer to use different app. Be it Facebook Messenger or Telegram... In my eu country nobody has WhatsApp and its not uncommon. Network effects are at play so it's what became popular first.
I appreciate that I was a bit too confrontational in my first reply and should have just added that WeChat, Line and Telegram are also used (plus many others), not just WhatsApp.
Why I think I (over) reacted is that it was, to me, an example of only partial escape from US American insularity. They understood that ppl outside the USA don't use SMS much, but only suggested a US American messaging platform as what was used instead.
Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just another messaging app thats popular depending on a local whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between iOS users.
On [1], If you only look at countries with decent GDP per Capita. iOS will have anywhere from 40 to 65% market share. Even in China iOS is well over 30%.
When you consider Africa + ASEAN + India has 3.5B population and has very low iPhone market share that sort of Skew the figures.
Because it doesn't show an accurate representation. iOS is growing at a faster rate than ever before in developing countries, Apple achieved 11% shipment market share for the first time in India in Q424.
I'm sure there are dozens of people in Germany who actively prefer iMessage but I haven't met one yet. Whatsapp achieved pretty much total market capture here back when SMS still were costly and the network effects that arose from that are among the strongest I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure if someone was to do a survey, almost everyone would say Messages is for SMS only and I think most of them wouldn't know it can do more than that.
Yet i write with most of my German friends using iMessages because its automatic and i dont have Telegram or WhatsApp because nobody uses it in my european country.
I didnt say this is so prevalent. Just that it exists.
My experience from few european countries is that middle class - tech/business/law people have iOS. Go to tech or business conference and its all iphones.
So its really easy to be in such circles. I live in EU country and its all iMessage or Signal. Nobody uses WhatsApp if something its Facebook Messenger or Instagram messages.
